Íø±¬ÃÅ

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

Today is the last day of classes, and I want to take a moment to recognize what that means. Whether you are a student, faculty member or staff, you showed up. You did the work. For our graduates, it means Commencement is nearly here, and with it the culmination of years of dedication, sacrifice and growth. To each of you: congratulations. What you have accomplished is significant, and what you will go on to do matters.

We are living through a period of remarkable change. The pace at which the world is transforming is without precedent in most of our lifetimes. And it is, I believe, precisely why what we do here at Íø±¬ÃÅ matters so much.

The students who come here are not looking to be shielded from complexity or difficulty. They are here to be prepared for it, equipped to lead through it and challenged to shape it. That is our common purpose and our shared obligation. Íø±¬ÃÅ is a place where the world is engaged at its most demanding and with rigor, with honesty and a forward-looking spirit that allows us to imagine what could be.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak, for the first time as Acting Chancellor, with University leaders and deans about how I intend to lead. I want to share that message, because I believe everyone in our campus community deserves the same clarity.

Students are our North Star. They are a fixed point by which every decision, every investment and every institutional choice must be oriented. When I question whether something is right to pursue, the origin of that question is to ascertain if our action will make the experience of learning and living here more meaningful, more rigorous and more worthy of the young people who entrust us with their education.

Collaboration is not a courtesy. It is how we will actually solve hard problems. The challenges facing this university—and the world our students will enter upon graduation—are too complex for any one office, school or perspective to address alone. I will lead by listening first and always. I will seek out faculty who have spent careers building knowledge in their fields. I will seek out staff who keep this institution functioning with care and professionalism every day. I will seek out students who see this place most clearly because they are living it. And I will seek out the citizens of Syracuse and Central New York, because this university exists as an integral part of this city and this region—a relationship I intend to honor and deepen.

I will be frank and forthcoming. When we face decisions, difficult or otherwise, I will explain my reasoning, invite perspective from across our community and take seriously the possibility that I am wrong. Trust between a chancellor and a campus is not given. It is built, slowly, through consistent honesty. That is my promise.

For more than 150 years, Íø±¬ÃÅ has shaped lives, advanced knowledge and changed our nation and the world. Every generation of this institution has had its defining moment and a chance to prove what makes Syracuse extraordinary. This is ours.

The challenges before us are real, but so is our capacity to meet them. Syracuse has never been defined by the difficulty of the moment. It has been defined by how its people rose to meet the moment. The discoveries not yet made, the students not yet reached, the problems not yet solved—those opportunities are real and I’m convinced that the best, most consequential chapter of this university’s story is the one we are about to write together.

I am honored to work with you. I am ready to be challenged by you. And I am committed, fully and without reservation, to the belief that the best of what Syracuse can be is ahead of us.

With respect and anticipation,

J. Michael Haynie
Acting Chancellor